SEO News You Can Use: Google Add New Determining Factor to E-A-T Guidelines

On December 15, 2022, Google updated its quality rater guidelines; this time, it’s experience that counts. The concept E-A-T or experience, authoritativeness and trustworthiness now has an additional criterion – expertise, meaning a content creator’s expertise will now be a quality rating factor when it comes to search rankings.

Google’s search quality rater guidelines have been updated and now include the acronym E-E-A-T (expertise, experience, authoritativeness and trustworthiness). 

Quality raters will now consider content creators’ first-hand experience with the content. Additionally, Google is also focussing on trustworthiness. The higher the content creator’s level of expertise, the higher your website’s E-E-A-T score.

Pages with a low E-E-A-T score or YMYL-type pages providing inexpert content will be considered untrustworthy and rated low.

According to Search Engine Journal, Google also pointed out that having a good reputation will not accommodate a low E-E-A-T score. To get a high E-E-A-T score, specifically when showing expertise, it’s great to include others with similar experience, especially on socials.

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Editor’s Note: “SEO News You Can Use” is a weekly blog post posted every Monday morning only on SEOblog.com, rounding up all the top SEO news from around the world. Our goal is to make SEOblog.com a one-stop-shop for everyone looking for SEO news, education and for hiring an SEO expert with our comprehensive SEO agency directory.